Unlike a less-formal Conservative-Lib arrangement, a Labour-Lib Dem coalition still wouldn’t command an overall majority in the House of Commons, and would have to include Scottish and Welsh separatists and other minority parties.

Such a pact would be poorly suited to delivering the deep cuts to public services needed to reduce the national debt, particularly with key Labour ministers neglecting their duties to campaign for the leadership. The favorite, Foreign Secretary and Blair clone David Miliband, is likely to face a bitter struggle against challengers from the left of the party.

A coalition of the losers would likely fall apart sooner rather than later, paving the way for a second election. If Cameron does indeed become PM with Lib Dem support, Britain is still likely to be heading back to the polling booths later this year. But Cameron’s behavior and tone since election night have been responsible and statesmanlike, and will stand him in good stead.

It shouldn’t, however, have come to this.

Even if Cameron is installed in 10 Downing Street by the end of the week, many in his party are far from happy. Cameron delivered big gains both in terms of vote share and MPs, but running against a government that had been in power for 13 years and was led by an unpopular prime minister in a dire economic climate? He should have done better.

The key charge against Cameron and his clique of advisers is that in the process of trying to make his party electable again they cast aside core Tory policies on immigration and Europe and lost touch with traditional Tory voters. Tellingly, analysis of the results shows that had the Tories not lost votes in key marginals to the anti-EU, tough-on-immigration United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), they would likely have won an overall majority.

Inevitably, pundits in the U.S. are analyzing the results in the context of the U.S. political scene and are trying to draw lessons for the November midterms. But comparisons are mostly useless. There’s no single UK issue which might generate mass opposition in the way health care has. Neither do we have the same conflicts over the size of government or over federalism versus states’ rights.

But that’s not stopping lefties like E.J. Dionne from making mischief by suggesting that Republicans need to embrace Cameronesque centrism to succeed in November. Democrats would love to see the Republicans, like the Tories, detached from their base but failing to win over enough independents. However the polls, and the success of the tea party movement, suggest neither will happen.

Republicans have woken up to the fact that moderation is not an option when you’re in a battle with extremists; it’s a lesson the Tories need to learn, and fast.

There is, however, one factor which Republicans might want to take note of: Labour, with the help of large amounts of cash from its union paymasters, was able to get out the working class (blue collar) vote in northern cites where the Conservatives were targeting seats.

The relationship between Labour and the white working class in particular (although fewer and fewer of them are actually working these days) is similar to that between U.S. Democrats and black voters: when they’re not ignoring or abusing them, they’re exploiting them. But come election time they’re cajoled and frightened into the voting booth by dire warnings of what the other side will do to them.

It’s entirely fitting that the abiding memory of Brown’s first and last election campaign as PM will be his calling an archetypal working-class voter a bigot. His remarks revealed his utter contempt for the ordinary men and women who have helped to keep Brown and his colleagues in power for 13 years — and still, they voted for him in droves.

There’s certainly a lesson for U.S. conservatives there: if the left stays in office for long enough, no matter how badly they govern they’re extremely hard to get rid of.

Mike McNally is a journalist based in Bath, England. He posts at PJ Tatler and at his own blog Monkey Tennis, and tweets at @notoserfdom. When he's not writing about politics he writes about Photoshop.

Click here to view the 21 legacy comments

Click here to hide legacy comments

21 Comments, 15 Threads

1.
MarkTheGreat

All three of the major parties have hurt themselves badly during this election season.

Actually, news is that the L-Ds have pulled out and are going with the Conservatives. Brown is meant to leave in the next day and Cameron to take over. The only worry is that L-Ds will balk at the idea because they have not got proportional representation. The L-Ds are meant to get the 6 seats in the Cabinet. We shall see if it holds together, but all indications are that the Lib-Lab pact is no more.

Andrew, I’d like your take on what is likely to ensue, as to the strategy and tactics of this new government. I thought I heard something about fixed election dates, so this would enter into it. Mind you, up here in Canada, the federal government introduced legislation, which I think passed, mandating fixed election dates, but it was gotten around.

Do you read the blog entries, as well as the columns of Ambrose Evans-Pritchard? For in his most recent blog entry, a comment about an expanded pound sterling zone sounds interesting, otherwise we are marking time until, as the commenter put it, “I see WW3 all the ingredients are there in place, we just need the excuse from some mad man.”

Your final observations about the left and its blue collar and/or black base are really interesting and true but I am always astonished at this trick that the left plays:
the left has only one thing that it can promise to the “poor”: MORE POVERTY, more misery.
And “the poor”, who are unluckily victim of their own lack of thorough information, always fall into the trap.

Perhaps because a large percentage of the Democratic base would rather be assured a meager, impoverished existence for nothing than to be forced to work for a little bit more success. Unfortunately, I think the trend will largely be towards higher unemployment in the future, particularly amongst males with little or no education. As it stands now, even though national rate of unemployment is around 10%, this doesn’t really give us a good picture of the situation. People with advanced degrees have a much lower unemployment rate, while amongst the poorly uneducated (think Detroit) rates are upwards of 20 to 25% in some areas. Detroit itself, while the official figure is 30%, city figures have hinted that the number is closer to an eye-watering 50%. Things will not get easier for these low-skilled workers as the American economy transitions to a system that requires even more knowledge and provides fewer jobs that require no training. Just think about the positions that today require significant computer skills (nursing for example) but have only done so in the last few years.

A lot of these people will opt for a meager, yet guaranteed existence instead of pushing themselves to learn a marketable skill. That is at least how it has turned out in Europe; now we can even see that living on the dole is the key indicator that your kids will also live on the dole. The gravy train lifestyle appears to be passed on from one generation to another seamlessly. That is why it is hard to get people off the dole and into work once they’ve gotten comfortable on the sofa.

Andrew: I’m actually disappointed the Lib-Lab deal fell through. I was hoping they’d go for it and blow it, allowing the Tories (and a hopefully chastened Cameron) to sweep to power. But yes, hopefully Clegg has overplayed his hand, and the voters have got a look at what PR would mean. If I were Cameron I’d tell Clegg all previous offers are off the table, and it’s now my way or the highway. I truly hope the LDs tear themselves apart over this. Come October (or whenever) I’ll be tramping the streets of Bath trying to get Foster out.

Mary: With you on Scotland. Time for an English parliament. And when we do cut them loose the Scots will be swarming into England like Berliners fleeing the East as the wall when up.

Mike, over here in Canada, CTV has a cable news network, and for an hour on Weekdays, “Power Play” is on the air. The strategist segment was interesting today. When you have Clegg, and 5 others (I think) going back to caucus with those not in cabinet, what are the odds that they will be presenting stuff that has to be passed, but is distasteful? That is the price of power that Cleggie
will have to pay.

I recall Daniel Hannan musing on his blog about a split in the Liberal Democrats
along the lines of the Liberals splitting along the lines of David Lloyd-George,
and Lord Asquith. Stranger things have happened. Right?

Mark: agreed, but I do think the Conservatives can come out of this best. Labour’s ready for another civil war and see my comment above on the LDs.

Sherab: re the left and the poor – it’s a junkie-pusher thing. I hope the Tories take this chance to show that conservative values and policies can help the poor more than any amount of socialism, but the British underclass has been so ruined by 13 years of Labour, and four decades of progressivism (see Theodore Dalrymple, who writes here and has produce several excellent books on the subject) that I’m not optimistic.

#6 Mike Mcnally – I agree. I think the Labour and Libdem parties dodged a bullet by not forming a coalition. The label ‘coalition of losers’ would just be the start. There would have been a second successive non-elected PM open to attacks like “subversion of democracy”; “fringe parties with no electoral mandate scamming their way to power”; “Stalin is smiling”; “it’s a coup, not an election” etc etc.

A great pity that Labour didn’t take the bait. Their non-elected reign would have ended the day that a spending cut was proposed. No British democrat would have taken them seriously in the soon-to-be-called next general election.

Now Cameron will govern with a quasi mandate until the day that the first spending cut is proposed. All this nonsense form the “Pollies”, as the Aussies call them, just when the great train wreck of the welfare state is beginning. Instead of political theatre the UK needs someone who can slowly bring the train to a civilized halt. Well, unsustainable things can’t last and continuing to put off tackling the problem will end in an almighty crash.

Unless Cameron does a Henry V and suddenly looks like a statesman, I think the Conservatives got the short end of the stick.

why didn’t they simply throw some towels and sheets around their heads. for sure, the british public would have loved that and voted them in post haste with many, many seats to their favor. well, isn’t that what they thought.
in any case, this couldn’t happen to a nicer nation state. but then, whose nation is it, anyway?

Actually, George Galloway went many steps further than that. As I once read, when they circumcised Galloway, they threw away the best bit. At your leisure, you can find videos of the man who single-handedly lowers the collective Scottish IQ by a few points dressed in pink leotards or lapping milk out of a bowl like a cat; with so many interesting hobbies, it’s a wonder that he found time to personally deliver goods to the Hamas, cheat on his Palestinian wife, or host his own show on the Iranian propaganda channel Press TV. (You can find the videos on youtube. I won’t post them because they personally make me a big queasy.) Despite his pandering demagoguery and virulent anti-semitism, he recently lost his position as an MP. He just came in third. That and a resounding thumping dished out to the BNP are two bright spots in the election, even if the final outcome, Cameron as PM followed by the most anti-Israeli man in the room, may be short lived.

The markets may start pushing Britain to make those spending cuts sooner, rather than later. It is a shame that neither of the three parties seemed willing to break the news to the British public; the 13 year New Labour spending binge has come to an end, and they will have a fiscal hangover that will last long past lunchtime.

As far as immigration, no one seemed to touch this issue either. There is quite a bit of discontent amongst the British public. Some of it is old fashioned bigotry, but the vast majority is related to the types of immigrants that have come in. Pakistan is a basket case and many British citizens may be physically in Her Majesty’s Realm, but spiritually they are much more in tune with the violent, vicious, anti-western paranoia being pumped out of Pakistan these days. Though it sounds extreme, I think they need to hit the pause button and reduce immigration to a trickle until they can get a handle on things a bit better.

While I agree with most of this article I have to question the reasoning behind the assertion that Cameron could have won the outright majority had he stuck more to the traditional immigration and Europe planks of the Tory party. Surely we can all see that taking that harder line would likely have lead to LESS people voting Tory, no? More likely it would simply have translated to more Lib Dem votes.